Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason believes getting David Gilmour and Roger Waters on the same page for a reunion would require something like a miracle. While speaking about the band’s The Dark Side of the Moon classic “Time” on the latest episode of The Story Behind the Song, Mason said he thinks it would take someone like the late Nelson Mandela to broker a reconciliation between Gilmour and Waters.
“I think it’s highly unlikely, but I would’ve said that before Live 8 — 10 years ago or 12 years ago, whatever it was,” Mason said. “The one thing I could think would be possible would be if there was some… if by getting back together we could influence saving the planet, world peace, or whatever. Hopefully, we’d step up. But I don’t think otherwise. It would take a Nelson Mandela or someone like that to lead on it.”
Pink Floyd’s Live 8 performance actually took place in 2005 at London’s Hyde Park, but the band’s three surviving members did share the stage for a brief one-off reunion in May 2011 at the London stop of Waters’ tour for a performance of “Comfortably Numb.” At the time, Gilmour noted on his website that he would not be ” repeating his special guest performance at a later occasion.”
Gilmour and Waters have continued to remain at odds since then, with Mason serving as somewhat of an intermediary. As recently as April, the ever-neutral Mason said he was “tempted” to reunite the band and praised Waters’ re-recording of The Dark Side of the Moon.
Just two months earlier, however, Gilmour blasted Waters as a “misogynistic, antisemitic Putin apologist” — a sentiment that came before Waters was investigated by German police for wearing a uniform resembling that of a Nazi SS soldier during a pair of performances in Berlin.
